By Kayla Freeman, Contributor

Each year of university can feel like a new beginning, culminating in a gruelling session of final exams. Final exams are customarily used to test students’ comprehension of course material over the course of the semester. However, many students study for exams by cramming as much information as they can the week, or sometimes even the night before the final. This trend has birthed what is commonly dubbed ‘exam culture’. Habits such as pulling all-nighters and drinking excessive amounts of caffeine are shared on social media and amongst friends, sometimes in an attempt to justify these unhealthy behaviours. Promoting these behaviours amongst peers and friends by sharing your poor habits can cause students to believe that these practices are acceptable, or even commendable.

The realistic approach to approaching education, on social media and otherwise, is to understand the repercussions of these exam habits. Rather than shaming friends and followers across Instagram or Twitter, I opt to lead by example. Refusing to contribute or engage with this type of behaviour on the internet may dissuade friends from posting these habits online due to lack of engagement. Also, encouraging positive habits will hopefully have the same impact by influencing others to adopt improved means of coping during exam season.

After I finished my first year, I learned how to study for exams in a way that was not detrimental to my mental or physical well-being. Students are often overwhelmingly stressed during exam season, as due dates for final papers, projects and exams approach. This can lead to issues such as insomnia, anxiety and lower sleep quality. The stress felt during exam season can lead to poor sleep quality and push students to consume excessive amounts of caffeine.

It is easy to see that these habits that are built over the years of undergrad, or even high school, often translate into normalized behaviours that negatively impact both physical and mental health. I believe one of the biggest problems that students face today is that these poor habits are being shared across various social media platforms in an attempt to normalize them. Sharing your unhealthy habits can encourage others to follow these behaviours, which is harmful.

It is easy to see that these habits that are built over the years of undergrad, or even high school, often translate into normalized behaviours that negatively impact both physical and mental health.

Often, I see students compete on social media about who stays up the latest, who drinks the most caffeine or who buys the most snacks. When these mindsets are shared online, they become accessible and may incite a trend, leading others to partake or post similar photos or videos. Along with this, it has become increasingly common to see students indulging in unhealthy foods, easily accessible via UberEats or other delivery methods.

This can be dangerous, especially during exam season when these poor habits often are used as distractions from studying and can lead to a mentally and physically vulnerable state.

Overall, exam season is a time when students are most at risk in terms of their health. Rather than normalizing poor behaviours by posting about your unhealthy habits online, it is more beneficial for these behaviours surrounding studying to be called out and given direction. If we all begin to conform and assimilate to “exam culture,” it will simply lead to more harm for students.

During the upcoming semester, it is essential to address and confront negative habits that cause more harm than good. It is also imperative to understand personal limits, rather than conform to the habits of the crowd. Through knowing and understanding individual capacities, poor habits can be substituted for more healthy ones. Investing time in discovering new and improved coping strategies for stress management may encourage students to prioritize their health alongside studies and education.

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Photo by Grant Holt

By: Brent Urbanski

University testing is the Neapolitan ice cream of student evaluation. With its two midterm tests and single exam, this format has become known to students as an imperfect trifecta. As this format continues to be observed by students across classes, it becomes clear that university testing needs to change.

Within McMaster University, infrequent heavily-weighted tests have become the standard. Their proponents argue that they offer a pragmatic solution to the demands brought on by an increasing student population.

This seems reasonable considering approximately 26,780 undergraduate students attend McMaster.

Yet, despite a relatively large student body, as many as 62 per cent of undergraduate courses have less than 60 students registered. Of the remaining third, another nine per cent is accounted for by first-year, faculty-core courses, where non-standard assessment methods have already been adopted. Thus, only 29 per cent of McMaster courses have rationale on the grounds of large class sizes for the current evaluative structure.

While the limited time that our professors possess is valuable and should be allocated appropriately, students pay an underreported opportunity cost that is similar in consequence. As students, university is intended to be a time to quench curiosity and inspire potential. This opportunity is contingent on our instructors’ abilities to teach.  

With the recent push by the McMaster Students Union to eliminate evaluations weighted 50 per cent or greater, it seems that a new horizon is bound. However, while removing grade-defining exams will function to ease student anxiety and diversify grade distribution, it does little to correct an inherently flawed system of learning.

Cognitive psychologists have known for decades that proper learning involves the deep and repeated consideration of material. The more you practice retrieval of information, the better your long-term memory will become.

Distributed learning involves learning material over time while interleaved learning involves practicing several units of content in rotation. Science states that adoption of these two learning techniques leads to resilient memory when combined with levels of deep practice such as testing.

For a full-time student, with roughly 62 days of content from five courses compressed into three testing instances per course, the present assessment scheme hardly encourages distributed learning.

Given the current structure, it is not difficult to understand why students cram for major evaluations. It has been shown clearly that cramming behaviour produces improved short-term results when compared to the long-term strategies of distributed and interleaved learning.

While long-term strategies promote lasting memories, a majority of students are hesitant over using them. The current grading structure is unforgiving, and students frequently resort to suboptimal learning techniques given the cost of failure. But as the goal of classes is to foster long-term retention of material, the university should diminish the value of cramming and reward optimal strategies.

To craft an ideal course, one must first break the association between testing and evaluation. After decades of experimentation, testing has been established as the strongest way to induce resilient learning; the average person, however, views constant studying as preferable.

What we need is more testing in university courses. Not only does this greatly improve student performance on final examinations, but also a majority of students claim that they prefer frequent, low-stakes testing in comparison to infrequent, high-stakes testing.

And even better, testing does not only reference closed-book, sit-down evaluations. The evidence for open-book testing, textbook homework, and take-home assignments is overwhelming. Any content that provides students an opportunity to elaborate on their knowledge in a distributed manner will produce worthwhile results.

At this point, there is no question that frequent testing improves learning, as we have seen with the recent success of blended learning. The major challenge lies within the feasibility of adoption. Will instructors and teaching staff take on the extra effort to provide their students with a framework for success? Only future transcripts will tell.  

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1. Say adieu to technology. Facebook and your phone are you two worst enemies, because they distract you before, during, and after you check it. Turn off yo’ phone (or at least put it some place far, far away… preferably in the hands of someone else who you semi-trust). Turn off yo’ WiFi. And hide yo’ kids.
2. Play music without words. Lyrics are very distracting because it makes you want to sing along as if you suddenly possess the voice of Shania Twain. That said, some people tend to focus better if they’re listening to music since classical music can put you to sleep entirely. So pull out your favourite Hans Zimmer score and pray that Inception really works.
3. Watch a YouTube video if you’re lost. No, not ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ There are many educational video channels, like Khan Academy, that go through a variety of academic subjects. They can be particularly helpful if you are bored of reading and need to cram learn a concept in 15 minutes or less.
4. Read the summary and important concepts sections of the textbook. They go over what was taught in the chapter without all the extraneous details. Sure you may miss out on these details, but this way you at least have something to put in your answer on a test rather than an impassioned plea to your grader.
5. Find someone in your class to teach you. If your classmate is on top of things he’ll be more likely to understand why you’re confused. If he’s not, talking about concepts still clarifies and reinforces understanding. Sidebar: Don’t pick the person you’re trying to wheel – your crush will be a distraction and you don’t need to look like an idiot in front of them anyway.
6. Depending on the subject, do practice problems. Some practice problems will go over the major types of questions that will likely show up on a test step by step. Write down the strategies that the textbook uses.
7. Avoid rereading your notes. The best way to learn is to engage with material. Write an outline of an important concept, do some practice problems, then use your notes to fill in what you missed.
8. Complain less. Do more. Complaining about studying makes for a cathartic bonding experience, but all that time can be better spent actually studying. So get it all out in 5 minutes, then get back to work.
9. Take a break. A 20-minute break to go make a cup of tea will do wonders. Your brain simply isn’t built to work hard for hours and hours. This time can also be spent making a delectable study snack consisting of Nutella and banana slices atop a waffle.
10. Sleep. If you have a headache and nothing is going through your brain, get some sleep and wake up earlier the next day. It’s a waste of time to sit at the table and not absorb any knowledge while getting increasingly frustrated.